


Thing You can't Fix

by CoffeeHunt



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Bobby/Crowley hints, Demon deal, Fatherly!Bobby, Flashbacks, Gen, Kinda, No real Pairings, Season/Series 05
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-18
Updated: 2013-01-18
Packaged: 2017-11-25 21:55:42
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,415
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/643362
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CoffeeHunt/pseuds/CoffeeHunt
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He wishes he could blame the ache in his chest on old age and being worn down from a hard job, but he misses them. </p><p>He misses being able to <em>save</em> them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Thing You can't Fix

**Author's Note:**

> This was written right after season 5's finale. So Sam had just gone to Hell with Lucifer and Michael. Obviously not really compliant with later seasons.
> 
> It's an old fic, but I'm always taking critiques.

It’s been months since he’s heard from Dean. The worry gnaws on his insides like a starved Rugaru.  
He knows Dean made it to Lisa’s, kept tabs and knows he is still there, living the life that was Sam’s last wish for his brother.  
He knows he is alive and breathing, still kicking and screaming, even if his guns are laid down.  
He knows, but he hasn’t heard from him and the worry just chews away. 

\--

He’s just outside LaVista, Nebraska, a hand pressed to his bleeding shoulder and his weight leaned on the barely standing frame of a shattered entertainment center. The witch is dead, sprawled across the floor and blood staining through her nightgown. The boys, her boys, but she would have sacrificed them anyway, are peering out from behind the couch with wide eyes. Even in this dark he can see the shine of tears in them and he swallows hard against the guilt clogging his throat. He doesn’t say anything. He can’t, but even if he did it would do them no good, so he keeps his mouth a tight line. The older boy, blood splattered across his Smurf pajamas, is watching him. His arms are tight around his little brother’s shoulders despite the shaking of his own, and he’s blasted back to years ago—to _his_ boys, in their matching Thundercat PJs. He can see Dean just as clearly as this boy. Still too young to count without using his stubby fingers and already being shaped into the little bullets John needs to make of them.  
Dean was giving him that look, the one that begged for help and refused it all-in-one. John was bleeding from the gut like a cut pig and Sammy was crying into the well of Dean’s narrow shoulder. After, he had gotten John to the hospital and the boys fell asleep curled into each other on the couch; flashy cartoons playing nosily on the TV and hot coco mustaches crusting on their lips. 

He wishes he could blame the ache in his chest on old age and being worn down from a hard job, but he misses them. 

He misses being able to _save_ them. 

“What’da we do?” The boy in the Smurfs drags him from the things he can’t fix and back into the now. He looks down at the boys, covered in tears and their mother’s blood, and thinks maybe he can’t save them either. 

“I don’t know.” He tells them. ‘Cause someone ought to give them the truth.

\-- 

It’s cold. Freezing. But it’s the middle of December and he’s someplace not far from the state-line of Nebraska, so he isn’t surprised by it. The heater in the Ford rattles like a bag of chains, but it cranks out enough hot air to thaw the numb feeling in his feet so it does its job.  
He sits in the parking lot of a Flying-J, under the glare of yellow lights and thinks he might finish the Styrofoam cup of coffee before he even gets back on the road. Rumsfeld is snoring in the footwell on the passenger side, his tail beating a happy rhythm on the floor-mat. 

“You’re getting rusty,” Crowley is seated next to him, without a whisper to announce his arrival and feet carefully placed around the dog. “one little witch and you’re all in knots.”  
He would have jerked, sent coffee spilling everywhere, and made some sort of startled noise but he was more of a Hunter than that. He’d been in this too many years to be surprised by much anymore. Even if it wasn’t Crowley, who hasn’t stopped ‘popping’ in since their deal, he would like to think he would have kept just as calm. So, he just drains the dregs of his coffee and easily pulls the shortened double-barrel from his waist, aim steady as he says, “Wha’da ya want, Crowley?”  
Crowley doesn’t even blink at the gun. It’s become too common a gesture, a formality, and he knows it. Even Rumsfeld has stopped reacting to the demons increasing presence. But Crowley plays the little game anyway, going through the motions. He watches as Crowley’s pupils blow, bleeding out in less than the time to blink and the pitch Hell has turned his soul gleams through. A flick of a finger and the gun goes clattering behind the seat, another and his body is forced back, pressed against the cold of the window.  
It isn’t painful, they’ve already passed that stage, the pressure on his bones is just the statement of power, but he can see there’s something new lurking in the pits of black staring into him.  
“What?” He asks, and for the first time isn’t sure he wants to hear whatever it is that Crowley is willing to give him.

He doesn’t answer right away, peeling back layers of flannel to see the messy job done of patching his wounded shoulder. The gauze is bloody and held on crooked by cheap medical tape. It’s pulled off with just one tug and then Crowley is bent over it, his mouth pressed open and wide to the damaged flesh. It’s a strange feeling, like warm water pooling under the skin, but he knows it’s been healed. For a moment he wonders what the price of this small favor is going to be, but then Crowley’s face is next to his and whispering, “I owe you a soul, Farmer John.”  
He snorts a bitter laugh at that. He’s tired and used and old, and he’s been conned enough times to know when he’s being suckered. He’d sold his soul to help his boys ( _his_ boys, because they’ve always been more his boys than John’s) and Crowley’s teasings aren’t going to give him any false hopes. “Oh? After all this time yer gonna jus’ give it back now?” Maybe his voice comes out a bit sharper than he intends, but he isn’t angry. He drew his lot and accepted it long ago.  
Crowley is still beside him, leaning over his shoulder. He can’t see his face but he can feel his smile. 

“So much for romantics.” Crowley quips before shifting, hand rising to hold him still as he pulls back and presses mouth against mouth. That surprises him, and he’s stunned slack-jawed. Crowley takes full advantage of that and takes it from the press of mouths to an actual kiss. Teeth click and lips are moving against each other before he really knows what he’s doing. It’s just the meeting of lips and tongues and teeth but it manages to encompass everything else and become less about the who and more about what as the fever turns blazing and starts a wildfire in the marrow of his bones.  
It chars through them like lightening and spills out into the muscle, taking inch by inch until it’s pouring out of him, from his eyes and ears, fingertip and every pour. He can feel the fire escape from his mouth and is certain that’s what makes Crowley pull back, even if he drags a tongue over his lips before fully separating them.  
He realizes then, staring into those stagnant onyx eyes, that the fire isn't something Crowley’s created in him but only just returned. 

“I keep my word.” Crowley says, a smirk on his face but it doesn’t quiet extend to his voice. “You get it back, at least, until I can snatch it from you again.” 

“Why?” He asks, stupidly, before he can think better. 

Crowley is silent for a moment and he realizes for the first time Crowley is thinking about how to answer him.  
Eventually he says, “You’re going to need it. Things are about to get bad around here, and it isn’t going to be as easy to make it out of this one—not in one piece.” He doesn’t say anything else. He’s gone, without a whisper to announce it.

\-- 

He’s an hour down the highway when his cell rings. Rumsfeld jumps onto the seat and barks until he can shush him quiet enough to answer. 

“Bobby?” He knows that voice, and his gut tightens. That voice is deeper now, rough with too many years of grief and obligations, but he still sees his little boy in Thundercat jammies and I-can-do-it-myself attitude. 

“Dean.” 

“Yeah, uh…it’s me.” He pauses, and he all but sees it as Dean scrubs a hand over his eyes. “Cas is here.” He finally says and his voice almost cracks.

“Sammy’s alive.”


End file.
